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(2015) Inquiring into human enhancement, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
I would like to propose a scale for enhancement techniques, and in so doing, additionally show that a set of techniques, already in use or likely to be used soon, can serve as a paradigmatic framework for such a scale. As a point of departure, I will briefly comment on a generally accepted definition of "human enhancement": enhancement refers to any attempt to temporarily or permanently overcome the current limitations of the human body through natural or artificial means. This is a comprehensive definition that would include both an apparatus designed to improve the vision of persons suffering from nearsightedness and the engineering of the gene coding for myostatin in a human embryo so as to give birth to an engineered champion.1 Two points in the definition may require further attention: the concept of limitation and the distinction between natural and artificial.
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Nouvel, P. (2015)., A scale and a paradigmatic framework for human enhancement, in S. Bateman, S. Allouche, J. Goffette & M. Marzano (eds.), Inquiring into human enhancement, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 103-118.
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